In a period in which national American music was developing with composers of the calibre of Aaron Copland and others trained in Europe, George Gershwin, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, went some way towards bridging the wide gap between Tin Pan Alley and
serious music. He won success as a composer of light music, of songs and musicals, but in a relatively small number of compositions made forays into a new form of classical repertoire.
Gershwin has won serious attention with his opera Porgy and Bess, a drama of Black America, set at first in Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina. There is an effective instrumental suite, Catfish Row, derived from the opera, while the song Summertime has proved particularly
attractive and memorable.
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, written in 1924 for Paul Whiteman and his jazz band, marries jazz with something of the classical form, an avenue further explored in Gershwin's Piano Concerto of the following year. The tone poem An American in Paris again offers a synthesis between
apparently divergent forms of music.
Gershwin's piano music includes the three Preludes, written in 1926, pieces that retain a modest place in modern American piano repertoire.
Biography selected from Naxos, the World's Leading Classical Music Label.
©HNH International Ltd. 2000. In Kunst der Fuge / On Classical by permission. All rights reserved.